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: : : —SOMETIMES, JAKOB SAYS, —sometimes I wish I'd never read a book in my entire life.
—What do you mean? Freya says. It's late. They've been drinking.
—I mean—well—it just seems to me like things should be simple, you know? Like when you get right down to it, what people want, it's simple. It should be simple.
—OK, Freya says.
—You know? It's like, you look at animals, they don't seem to need that much to be happy. They need food and maybe, I don't know, a place to shit, some shelter—
—Sleep— Freya adds.
—Sleep—and some companionship—and it's like, that's it, you know?
—Recipe for a happy animal, Freya says, and sips from her bottle. They're sitting together on her couch, leaned up against one another a little bit, with their beers held in their laps, since the coffee table that used to be here is now in Jakob's apartment, a little over a mile away.
—Yeah, and it's simple, Jakob says. — But with people—somehow we get it all wrong. We fuck it up. It's not like we really need anything more than that. But we get it in our heads that we need something else—like I need my independence.
—Or I need to be smarter, Freya adds.
—Or I need to write a novel, Jakob adds. —And these desires are the ones that really—that really fuck us up. And you know what the most—the most fucked thing about it is?
—What's that? Freya asks.
—The most fucked thing about it is is that those more complicated desires can actually make it harder for us to achieve the simpler ones. Like, you know, I think about us—
—You think that's a smart idea? Freya asks.
—I don't even know anymore, Jakob says, and they both drink again. Jakob wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and says —But, yeah, I think about us, and I think about the ways that I fucked things up, and I know that part of the reason why is because I wanted things that were, you know, kind of those weird things that humans want—
—Like what? Freya asks.
—Like what, Jakob says. —I don't know—just—stupid shit—like I wanted you to be tidier sometimes or whatever—or like when your brother was here—I wanted it to be just the two of us—or I wanted to have that space, that extra room. It felt so important at the time but now it just seems kind of—what's the word?
—Petty, Freya suggests, and the answer stings Jakob, and he realizes that because it stings it must fit.
—Petty, Jakob says. —Or like the stuff between you and Fletcher—that stupid kiss—like it really didn't matter but somehow it got built up in my head that I wanted you to do something, to make it up to me somehow, I don't even know how you could have done that, but because you weren't doing it or you didn't do it I just got more and more resentful, to the point where I couldn't even—I wasn't even really seeing you. I was just kind of seeing like my resentment. And it just—I just—if I'd just been able to let go of it a little bit—that desire—then maybe—
—Maybe what? Freya says, after an interval.
—I don't know, Jakob says. His throat feels tight. —Then maybe—
The words in his head are then maybe we'd still be together.
—Then maybe I wouldn't have fucked things up so bad, he manages to say instead. He blinks once, hard.
—So, says Freya, —what does all this have to do with books?
—Huh? Jakob says.
—At the beginning, she says. —You said you wished you'd never read a book in your entire life.
—Oh, yeah, Jakob says. —That. He drinks. —It's just—I feel like books are part of what fucked me up. Like—you read a book, and it shows you somebody having this life, right, that's like packed with adventure and heroism or maybe it's just messed up and dysfunctional in a way that somehow, when you're young, seems romantic or something—?
—Like you read On the Road—
—Yeah, or—for me it was Catcher in the Rye—
—And then you get all like how could I make my life more like that?
—Yeah, Jakob says. —And that's where the confusion starts.
—It doesn't just come from books, you know, Freya says.
—I know, Jakob says.
—It comes from all over.
—I know. I just feel like it was books that did it to me the worst.
—You've read a lot of books, Freya says.
—It's true, Jakob says. —And I'm not sure I'm any happier for it. I mean—I'm thirty-two and I'm living alone—it's like I still haven't mastered the companionship part of the whole what people want thing.
—No, Freya says. —Me either.
They sit there, on the couch, holding hands now, staring out into the center of the room.
—Well, Jakob says. —Here we are.
—Yep, Freya says.
—It's sort of nice, Jakob says.
—It is, Freya says. —Just as long as we don't complicate it.
—You think that's possible? Jakob says.
—I don't know, Freya says. She goes to take another sip of beer but her bottle is empty. —What do you think?
—I don't know, Jakob says.
And so they sit there, in the living room, holding hands, touching at the arm and shoulder, each of them aware of the cycle of the other's breathing, and their laundry sits at the far end of the room in two separate dufflebags, still, and they breathe, and wait, as though the answer will come to them, be made evident, in time.
END OF BOOK FIVE
: : :
:: Year entries
Index | << | 75 | >>
:: Jakob entries
Index | << | 19
:: Freya entries
Index | << | 16
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